Put your experience into words
Authenticity in this work means making relevant experience discussable. It does not require saying everything you feel, performing a supposedly fixed identity, or using emotional disclosure to make the client care for you. Choose language that serves the work and leaves room for an answer.
‘We have postponed our last three review meetings. I am concerned that I am making decisions without your input. Can we agree a review time we can both protect?’
This names an observable pattern, explains its practical effect, and asks for something. Compare it with ‘You are not committed’, which turns an interpretation into a judgement of the person.
Observation, thought, feeling, need, request
A participant introduced FONT, drawing on learning with Outlandish and Abi Handley. The letters stand for feelings, observations, needs, and thoughts; Doug Belshaw’s published account works through observation, thought, feeling, and need before a request. The acronym is a memory aid, not a required speaking order.
| Distinction | Example |
|---|---|
| Observation | ‘We have not had a sponsor review for three weeks.’ |
| Thought / interpretation | ‘I am wondering whether this work has become less of a priority.’ |
| Feeling | ‘I feel uneasy about proceeding on assumptions.’ |
| Need | ‘I need a shared basis for deciding the next stage.’ |
| Request | ‘Could we spend twenty minutes deciding whether to continue, change, or pause?’ |
Use words you would actually say. Ask ‘What else could this mean?’ before treating your interpretation as settled. A person may be distracted, overcommitted, anxious, or responding to something outside your view. Read Doug’s account of FONT and NVC.
Listen to concerns before naming a pattern
Objections may concern the substance of your proposal, a missing condition, a competing priority, or the personal exposure that change creates. Do not treat disagreement as a symptom called resistance. Answer the question, investigate the concern, and remain open to being wrong.
If objections keep changing after each has been addressed, you may need to discuss the process itself. There is no reliable three-objection rule. Timing depends on the relationship, the stakes, and what you have heard.
‘We have worked through several different concerns, and I sense there is still something unresolved. What would make it difficult to go ahead even if these practical points were addressed?’
Then listen. Naming a pattern is an invitation to inquiry, not a diagnosis that the client must accept.
Power, collusion, and contradictions
A sponsor can commission psychological safety while punishing challenge, ask for collaboration while withholding authority, or request an independent recommendation while making clear which answer is acceptable. The consultant can become a buffer, a scapegoat, or a respectable explanation for a decision already made.
Explore what the work can honestly achieve. Ask what the sponsor will do differently and what happens if findings contradict their preference. Consider whether raising a contradiction privately creates more possibility than a public confrontation. Also ask who may pay the price of the choice.
- Name a specific contradiction and its consequences.
- Seek a commitment that can be observed, not a general statement of support.
- Agree how dissent and unwelcome information will be handled.
- Reduce scope or change sponsorship if the required conditions cannot be created.
- Use peer support, supervision, and escalation where the consequences exceed your authority.
Economic dependence and unequal power are real. Do not turn ‘be authentic’ into an instruction to ignore them. Work out what can be said, where, with what support, and to what useful end.
Choose your intervention
The earlier systemic consulting material explores practical tensions: challenge or work with what is there; surface an issue or let it lie for now; zoom into the encounter or out to the wider pattern; be visible or enable others to act; absorb attention temporarily or return it to those who must own the work.
There is no virtuous pole to select every time. Make a choice, notice its effects, and revise. Working quietly can be skilful; it needs a defensible purpose and a route back to the client’s agency. Becoming the permanent lightning rod can protect others briefly and create dependency over time.
Use your own reactions as information
A left-hand column exercise separates what was said from what you thought and felt but did not say. Revisit a short difficult exchange. What assumption did you make? What evidence did you have? How did withholding or acting on it affect the next exchange? What could you test openly next time?
The ladder of inference is another useful reminder to distinguish selected observations, meanings, assumptions, and conclusions. Both exercises support inquiry; neither lets you infer another person’s inner state from their behaviour.